


in a winter forest thick with trees

by volatilehearted (anomalagous)



Series: like tangled roots [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 21:23:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 22,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4195449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomalagous/pseuds/volatilehearted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his eighteenth birthday, True Alpha Scott McCall finds himself needing to choose an official Emissary to serve the McCall Pack. Unfortunately, when the decision is finally upon them, Stiles is forced to leave on family business, leaving Scott to make the decision alone. Without Stiles and feeling off-center, Scott struggles to make the right call for his pack while slowly realizing maybe not all the potential Emissaries have come for friendly reasons...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The cards started coming the day after Scott turned eighteen. Some of them were literal cards, bought at Hallmark with a customized note tucked inside because Hallmark definitely didn't cover the need niche for this particular correspondence. Some were formalized, hand-calligraphied filigree, like an invitation to the wedding of some royalty Scott had never heard of. Some of them were resumes, printed off of a supernatural version of LinkedIn that Scott had also been ignorant of until they started to arrive. Some had been carefully stripped of scent, some were so laden with it Scott was pretty sure they were supposed to be carrying a separate message in the smell. One of them smelled so heavily of sex he threw it away without even opening the envelope. All of them had the same purpose, or seemed to.

Two weeks after his eighteenth birthday, Scott had a whole bag of the cards and no real explanation. So he bundled them up and he bundled Stiles up and they both clambered into Stiles' Jeep and went to pay Deaton a visit. They were both well aware that it was just as likely they'd get no answers out of the evasive druid, but it was better than not trying at all.

They came into the back room of the clinic virtually unannounced and Scott dropped the bag full of letters and postcards onto the table with an impossibly unamused expression already set on his face. The thud of their unreasonable weight was enough to pull Deaton's attention out of his end-of-day work.

His eyebrows twitched mildly in a way that would have been a full-on raise on another man. “What do we have here?”

“I was hoping you'd be able to tell us.” Scott grumbled, reaching into the bag pull the first few letters out. “They just kind of started showing up all of the sudden.”

With a minutely puzzled cant to his head, Deaton took one of the letters from Scott. His eyes moved carefully over the first few lines, and then he sighed, offering the letter back in Scott's direction. “I should have realized this would happen.”

Stiles made an incredulous sound in his throat, dropping his head down on his neck a little to further express that incredulity. “Realized what would happen?”

The calm demeanor that the druid maintained as he turned his eyes to Stiles was almost infuriating. “Legally and mystically speaking, Scott is of age now. That means that people who were previously discounting stories of him are going to start taking him far more seriously as an Alpha. Since he is a True Alpha, and one so young, Scott will turn a lot of heads. Combined with the fact that his territory includes a Nemeton, even a broken one...well. There will be a lot of people competing for the honor of becoming Scott's Emissary from now until he chooses one.”

Bristling, Stiles drew his shoulders back and pulled himself up to his full height. His head came back up just so he could squint at Deaton like he thought Deaton might unzip his skin and prove to be Miley Cyrus. “Wait. But doesn't Scott already have an Emissary? Isn't that you?”

Deaton laughed, shaking his head. “No. I've been standing in while the McCall Pack has lacked an Emissary of their own. It's a decent short-term solution but it isn't really a replacement for a proper Alpha-Emissary bond. Most Alphas can bond to more than one Emissary in their time, but most Emissaries can only bond with one Alpha. I was bonded to Talia, I can't bond with Scott.”

If it were at all possible for Stiles to bristle more, he did, eyes still narrowed. “So, what, we're supposed to just let some stranger into the pack to fill the whole druid role and be okay with that?”

“It certainly is one solution to the problem.” Deaton noted, almost infuriatingly calm. At least, it seemed to infuriate Stiles.

“Yeah? Well it's a dumb solution, have you seen what happens with strangers around here? We let them close to us and they try to kill us. I don't--”

He only cut himself off when Scott reached up to put a hand on his shoulder, calm and resolute. He squeezed Stiles' shoulder, very gently, to forestall any protest when he asked, “What would we have to do? To handle this the usual way.”

Deaton made a motion with one shoulder like he was trying to shrug and didn't want to quite put enough energy into it to make it all the way through the motion. “If you already knew a previously unbonded Druid, you could probably still get away with announcing they were your Emissary and working on forging a bond. Since you don't, you'll have to hold a tournament and observe the potential candidates to try and pick the best choice from them.”

“A tournament?” Scott asked like it was his turn to be incredulous, the whole of his face condensing with confusion around the place his nose met it. “Like kings used to have for knights and stuff?”

“Something like that.”

Scott balked a little, letting his hand drop off of Stiles. Stiles rolled his shoulder indignantly, but he didn't actually open his mouth. “But how am I supposed to know who the best choice will be just by watching them?”

“You trust your instincts.” Deaton sounded like it was so easy, so reasonable. “As a True Alpha, they should be very reliable. You'll also be given an opportunity to see how well they can perform at their potential duties.”

The boys and Deaton stared at each other for a long time in silence. It wasn't awkward exactly, but everyone in the room knew that Scott and Stiles both wanted to protest the plan but didn't have any better alternatives.

It was Deaton who broke the tension, as easily as a scalpel through sinew and just as precise. “Scott, there are a few of the big kennels in the back that could use hosing down. If you took care of those and Stiles helped me with sorting out the last of this stock, I'd be able to get home at a decent hour.”

“Of course.” Scott murmured, always willing to help, and he was out of the room before Stiles could voice a solitary, paranoid warning. The way from the examination room to the back area where they kept the soiled carriers and other paraphernalia of veterinary care was a familiar one to Scott by now. The sound of Deaton and Stiles discussing the content of the little brown bottles faded out, swallowed by distance and inattention and the distractingly pungent blanket of scent surrounding the concrete skirt and its contents. Fear, sickness and frustration. It did little to set his mind at ease.

Scott had never really thought of himself as a territorial person before he was bitten. He wasn't sure he was really a territorial person now, well after the assault that had turned his life inside-out, but he was definitely more aware of boundaries and something anyone might describe as territory than he ever had been before. The idea of a stranger rolling in to the delicate balance the pack had going was upsetting, in the way that it dug vague anxiety down in under his breastbone and put hooks into him.

Cleaning out the carrier cages was usually oddly soothing; Scott enjoyed the simplicity of the action and the ability to wash away the scent of misery so easily. Tonight, it was only making his general sense of malaise worse, setting his hackles on edge over the line of his shoulders. There was an incredible temptation for him to rush it just to separate himself from that scent, but Scott knew if he did that he'd just get sent right back out to do the job right. There was no point in doing it twice.

He gave himself a little shake by the shoulders and knuckled down, forcing himself to concentrate on the task at hand instead of his worries. He pulled in on the leash of his mind every time it tried to wander, choosing instead to focus on each individual carrier until he could detect no further scent other than 'clean'. He went through them one by one and with diligence, determined to at least get this done right. Maybe it took him longer than it would have otherwise, but at the end, Scott stood on the concrete skirt with his hands on his hips, damp sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and gave himself a satisfied smile. He stacked the carriers door-down to allow them to dry and gradually made his way back into the clinic building.

Scott found Stiles and Deaton where he'd left them, in one of the examination rooms. There were a few bottles of liquid set out on the table, labels facing away from the door, and while Deaton stood implacable and resolute, spine straight and eyes on Stiles, Stiles was leaning over and gripping the sides of the table with his hands, his singular sort of rare attention leveled on the bottles. Whatever conversation they'd been having stopped as soon as Scott shadowed the threshold, Stiles jerking to stand upright and peer narrow-eyed in Scott's direction.

It probably said something a little unkind about their relationship that Scott saw nothing abnormal about Stiles acting a little suspicious. Instead, he turned his attention towards Deaton. “The carriers are all clean. We should probably get going, sorry for barging in on you so late. I guess I was just starting to get a little freaked out by all of those letters.”

“I'd still like to know exactly how they got your address.” Stiles muttered, shoulders rising up in a half-defensive, half-embittered gesture. There was some kind of unspoken choreography in the glance both Scott and Deaton afforded him, although neither spoke a word. Stiles got the message anyway, clearly, from the way he kept his shoulders around his ears but dropped his hands out, palm up, to beg an explanation of his error this time.

Scott didn't humor him. Instead, he moved through the room to put his fingertips against the crook of Sitles' elbow and try to pull him towards the door. “Thanks for your help, Dr. Deaton, I really appreciate it. Please let us know what we need to do to get this tournament thing underway.”

He hoped he was projecting more confidence than he was feeling as he turned to leave, dragging his best friend along with him.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

A car ride later found Scott and Stiles laying side-by-side on their backs on Scott's bed. It was a familiar state of being, something that had happened a hundred times or more over the course of their lives. It was companionable, usually, but then again usually Scott wasn't also spending the time fretting. The more he chewed over the idea mentally, the more Scott was certain that he didn't want to add a stranger into the pack dynamics. He didn't want to rush straight into having an Emissary just because he'd turned eighteen, especially when it meant pulling an outsider in to do it. He turned his head to consider Stiles' profile, a frown pressing the corners of his mouth downwards. “Do you think this is a good idea?”

“Nope.” Stiles closed his mouth down around the word so quickly it popped. “But I think the pack not having an Emissary is a worse idea and I don't have any better ones.”

Scott sighed, dissatisfied with the answer. He shifted his weight against the bed, shoulders-first, and turned to face Stiles more fully. “Don't you think we've been doing okay on our own? I mean, with just Deaton?”

Stiles blinked up at the ceiling, and then turned his head to meet Scott's gaze. “In a word? No.”

It never ceased to puzzle Scott, on some minute level, the moments where Stiles decided to be brutally honest. They seemed to be carefully crafted to do the most damage, even when Scott knew for a fact that it wasn't a conscious effort at all, that sometimes the collateral was coincidence rather than causation.

Apparently his injury showed on his face, because Stiles sighed a little, sounding like he was trying to sound encouraging. “Look, dude, I don't think it's your fault, don't think that. I just think that you being a True Alpha can only go so far. There's a lot we don't know and I kind of feel like if you had an Emissary you had a proper bond with and who didn't basically operate like we were on the bottom rung of the need-to-know basis secret wolfy society, maybe we could be a little more proactive about all the bullcrap that rolls through town. I think if we're gonna commit to this thing and trying to protect the town, we'd better do it right.”

“I'm just worried that I'll pick the wrong person and things will be worse.” Scott could feel all the features of his face drawing together, like they were all attempting to occupy the same central point on his face.

Stiles levered himself up onto his elbow. He was probably trying to split the difference between determined and sympathetic, but what he ended up with was deeply annoyed. “Scott. I know you have this problem with sometimes trusting people too quickly and too easily, but you're not stupid. You can tell when someone's a problem. You'll know, okay? I trust you to be able to pick a good fit for you and the pack. Okay?”

“And you'll be there to help me, so I guess it'll be fine.”

Stiles' eyes shuttered in a startled blink, and Scott could see him swallow a mouthful of air before he spoke again, voice rough like the act of speaking truth was enough to scratch it up. “Yeah, I'll help. Don't worry about it, Scotts, it'll work out. And once it does, the pack'll have a brand spankin' new Emissary to help us keep our butts out of the fire. It's a winning hand, honestly.”

Scott sighed and reached out to take Stiles' hand in his own. It didn't feel exactly like a promise when Stiles twisted his wrist to knit their fingers together and run his thumb over Scott's knuckles, but it felt like they could be approaching one, and that was good enough.

He was still holding Stiles' hand when he drifted off to sleep.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Three days into the attempt to organize the so-called 'Emissary tournament', Scott wasn't entirely certain how he was ever going to survive without Deaton's scaffolding holding him up. He'd tried sorting out the letters on his own, but he'd quickly become overwhelmed with the sheer volume and varying natures of them. It had been a special kind of challenge to cram them all into a bag and totter up to the clinic on his dirt bike with them hiked over his shoulder like Santa's sack, but he'd managed it somehow. In between patients and after hours, Deaton had helped him sort out the messages from people he should give a response to from the messages from people that Deaton felt would be best left unacknowledged. He supplied Scott with as many addresses as he had and a list of names for Stiles to cover the rest, coached Scott through writing up a form letter which was polite and straightforward and true to who Scott was, as a person and as an Alpha, but that also covered all of the bases needed. Scott felt Deaton was probably holding up the lion's share of the weight in this planning venture, and part of him wanted to feel bad about that, but the rest of him was just grateful. There was a lot to be done, the pressure of it bearing down on his shoulders was almost crippling, when added to the pressures of school and lacrosse and trying to keep his pack coordinated and content. There was a phrase he'd heard, once, in one of the movies that Stiles had forced him to watch under protest, which he was only just starting to understand. He felt like butter scraped over too much bread.

If he hadn't been so tired, he would have been sure there was a certain amount of sin in an eighteen year old werewolf feeling that way.

At least the location for the tournament was covered. Scott had nearly pulled a patch of his head bald trying to decide on a place that would be big enough and sturdy enough but also cheap enough to rent on the incredibly limited McCall Pack Budget. Luckily, Stiles had salvaged the integrity of his scalp by suggesting the Argent Arms warehouse they had previously used for a bloody showdown against assassins. Scott didn't particularly want to revisit those memories, but he did agree that the warehouse was a perfect solution once they cleaned it up, and all it had taken was cornering Chris Argent with what Stiles called his True Puppy Eyes, and they had all the permission they'd ever need.

Which is how they found themselves on a Saturday afternoon that could have been used to do literally almost anything else and been more enjoyable, stripping down the greenish plastic sheeting that had been hanging through most of the warehouse. Chris had let them borrow a sandblaster to get the bloodstains out of the floor, but after letting Stiles try to operate it for approximately five seconds, Scott had intervened and suggested maybe they let someone with some experience with heavy machinery do that part instead. There were plenty of other things that needed to be done to get the location ready that didn't involve the risk of Stiles losing fingers.

Scott could handle the sulking that came in its stead. It was an easy trade. Sulking Stiles to ward off Missing Fingers Stiles.

“I could have figured it out eventually,” Stiles was complaining, loudly, for going on the second hour, as he drug the sheeting that Scott had pulled down into a single mostly-neat pile. “And then we wouldn't have to be worrying about going to ask the adults like we're four years old and can't use power tools. Lydia said I'm always the one that figures it out.”

Flicking his eyes up towards the tank lurking in the corner, its hose already tangled from Stiles' previous attentions, Scott couldn't quite help the smirk that spread out over his face. “Yeah, I'm sure you'd have figured it out eventually, but I like you having at least one layer of skin. Since Lydia isn't here to terrify me into submission, you're just gonna have to cope with my decision.”

“Well, your decision is stupid and I just want that on the record.”

Scott smiled, first at the last tarp he was pulling down from the ceiling, and then over his shoulder at Stiles. There was something familiar in the way he moved, the way Stiles could sweep from utterly focused on folding the tarps up to casting his attention around the entire room, trying to catalog every task left to accomplish. He was still smiling as he drug the last sheet over to the pile. Even with the broken pieces of the dry wall here and there, the warehouse already looked a lot more open and inviting.

Stiles looked up as Scott approached and something seemed to soften in his expression. It almost seemed sad, for reasons that Scott couldn't explain. It didn't last, mostly because Stiles pulled his lips into his mouth, an expression that almost always indicated he was expecting an answer he didn't think someone was going to want to give. “Hey, so we've been at this a while and I've got a few things I gotta take care of before it gets dark. Can we take a break and meet back up later to finish up?”

They had only been cleaning the warehouse for a few hours, not nearly the amount of time that Scott would have called long enough to merit a serious break. As adverse to manual labor as Stiles could be (and that was frequently, constantly, all the time, very adverse), he'd never just ditched Scott in the middle of a previously arranged activity. Something stirred in the back of his mind, trying to tell Scott that something was a little off about his best friend, but when he looked square into Stiles' eyes, under those lifted brows, all he saw was pure Stiles. Whatever was going on, his friend was, at the very least, himself. Almost anything else, Scott could excuse.

So he smiled, inclining his head downwards in a nod. “Yeah, sure. I'll probably work on this a little more before heading home, I'll text you when I do so you don't end up coming back up here for no reason. Sound good?”

“Sounds great.” Stiles flashed Scott a rare  honest smile, one long hand patting the alpha on the shoulder as he flounced his way towards the door. “I'll probably be around for dinner, so I'll text you when I'm done. Good luck with the whole janitorial sciences gig.”

Scott watched Stiles leave with that same faint little voice trying to call his attention inside of his head. Like before, he saw nothing in his friend that didn't belong, and so he pressed it down, muzzled the thing until it stopped barking. There was work to be done, and the warehouse was most assuredly not going to clean itself.

He'd probably have been a little worried if it had. Worried, but somehow not surprised.

Dinnertime came and went without any word from Stiles. Scott tried to remind himself that his best friend was allowed to have a life outside of the pack, outside of him, and waited an extra two hours before texting him. As was usual with Stiles, Scott didn't get an apology, exactly, but he did get the rest of the addresses he needed to send out to the invited Emissaries for the tournament, so Scott figured that was close enough. There was no point in expecting miracles, after all.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

A week before the tournament was scheduled to start, Scott had a Dream.

That wasn't strange, Scott dreamed a lot, in varying levels of intensity. He'd assumed that was true for everyone, that it was just the way dreams worked. Some seemed gauzy and insubstantial, some seemed almost more real than his admittedly bizarre reality.

Then there was this Dream.

It didn't feel like reality. It felt like he'd gone past reality to whatever lay beyond as more truthful, which Scott's mind kept trying to tell him was impossible at the same time it was trying to tell him that it was happening.

The loam of the Preserve's forest beneath his feet seemed thick and rich and visceral, warm and wet. The trees stretched up, scratching their fingers at the sky, and in the center of it all was a tree that was far too vast and too large to be real, its branches vanishing into the clouds. Without being able to see them, Scott knew that the roots of the same tree were burrowed down past the bedrock of the earth, just as he knew that he was looking at the Nemeton before it had been cut down, in the height of its power.

Laying in front of the Nemeton on the forest floor was a jigsaw puzzle. In the branches there was something, something that neither his sharp eyes nor his sharp nose nor his sharp ears could make out. All Scott could see, from time to time, was a Cheshire grin and a flash of a gaze like glass. “Find the pieces, Scott,” A voice said, distorted by the wood and distance but nagging at him like it should be familiar. “Find the pieces and finish the puzzle.”

The thing was, looking down at the puzzle at his feet, Scott could already tell that all the pieces were there. Obligingly, he knelt down, putting them in order until he could snap them together and see the bigger picture. His pack, Scott decided. It was a picture of his pack, although the only face he could make out with any detail was his own.

With the puzzle complete, he looked back up to see colorless eyes peering down at him from the branches of the Nemeton. “Okay. I put the puzzle together. What now?”

But the voice didn't relent. It just repeated, over and over, with increasing urgency. “Find the piece, Scott. Find the piece. Alpha McCall, find the missing piece. FIND the missing PIECE!”

Confusion and an edgy desperation inspired by the sound of the strange-familar voice caused Scott's hackles to raise. “But there aren't any pieces missing! They're all already here!”

The voice broke off into sharp-edged laughter and Scott woke up on a cold sweat.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Scott was beginning to think that all of his luck in life had been used up on the supposed good fortune of becoming a True Alpha. It certainly wasn't being used anywhere else, because the universe or fate or whatever other clockwork mechanism brought the pieces of his life around to line up together clearly had a sense of humor that was inversely proportionate to Scott's ability to actually deal with things.

The major lacrosse game, he could have dealt with. Projects in two of his classes was almost not a problem, even with the pressure of the tournament looming on the near horizon. He could—and did—handle it all, but Scott couldn't help but think that it would have been a lot easier if fate had not conspired to make this week so happen to also be the first week in Scott's memory where Stiles felt he needed to choose family obligations over Scott.

He tried to be understanding. Scott knew how much his family, what little was left of it, meant to Stiles, and he knew that he couldn't reasonably expect Stiles to pick him every time, at the exclusion of all else. It was just bad timing. That's all it was. Bad timing.

Knowing it was bad timing was of little real comfort to the hollow feeling in his chest, the faintly sucking wound that was his awareness of Stiles' absence as he pulled up to the warehouse in the thin light of a Saturday morning. The holiday gave them three days of a long weekend to sift through the applicants coming to vie for the position of McCall Pack Emissary. Deaton seemed optimistic that three days would be all they needed. He continued to reassure Scott that a good Alpha-Emissary bond was formed as much out a synergy of personality as it was out of necessity and skill, and that Scott's instincts were strong enough to lead him to a good fit in that amount of time. Scott was fairly sure that Deaton was misappropriating Stiles' intuition and pinning it to Scott's chest instead. Stiles was always the one who somehow sniffed out the bad guys before the bad guys had ever revealed themselves, it was Stiles' guts which always checked true. Scott's guts were practically useless.

For not even the fifth time, Scott felt his ribs tighten with a simple wanting.

He distracted himself by opening up the warehouse, throwing wide what doors and windows could be thrown to let the air move through the space. All evidence of the battle which had once been waged in it had been scraped and scrubbed and sandblasted away. A simple few coats of new white paint covered the walls, and someone—Lydia, Scott thought—had designed a crest of sorts for the McCall pack and emblazoned it on the far wall, heavily based on the concentric circles of Scott's tattoo. Somehow, laid out on the white background like that, it reminded him of the Nemeton. He wondered if that had been intentional or if it was just another one of those times where his mind wanted to see connection where there was none, meaning where meaninglessness reigned.

The edges of the room were lined with alternating folding chairs and folding tables, the latter of which had been covered in plastic tablecloths of various patterns and colors. Nothing matched, but they'd afforded it, and Scott had long ago given up being picky about things like that, about the same time he'd started sitting down with his mother every week to clip coupons and triage their grocery list. There'd be food and drinks on them later, but the general consensus had been that leaving the consumables out, unattended, in a room full of people they weren't completely sure they could trust yet and who could also dismantle a werewolf in five minutes or less was a risk they didn't need to take. The pack was going to be distracted enough.

Scott caught the sound of a car pulling up in the parking lot well before it got close enough to stop. His pulse spiked, for just a moment, worried that some of the attendees of this whole ridiculous affair had arrived early. It was a sourceless fear, because just as soon as the spike was over, Scott realized he recognized the sound of the van Braeden drove, underpinned by the tinny almost hypersonic whine of Kira's Prius. He met them in the doorway, making a quiet sound of appreciation in his throat when Lydia appeared from one of the vehicles, already in full warpaint, with an enormous take-out cup of coffee in hand, extended towards him. He wanted to tell her a hundred things in that one moment, that she was a remarkable human being, that she was a red-haired goddess bearing caffeinated blessings, but the words all lined up inside of his head in Stiles' voice and none of them would come out of his mouth, so he satisfied himself with a quiet, “Thanks.”

Malia was at his side next, pushing into his personal space nose-first while Kira turned to help Braeden and Deaton gather up the rest of the supplies. Scott tried to move past to lend his own hands, but Malia stepped directly into his trajectory, expression frank in the way that usually meant she was going to temporarily discard the notion of tact. “You smell nervous. And sad. Why are you nervous and sad?”

“Honey, we're all about to have to watch a bunch of strangers line up and strut for our amusement in some kind of misguided attempt to pick one who's crazy enough to join our circus, of course he's nervous. He's the ringleader.” Lydia had a way of speaking, when she wanted to, that was both utterly reasonable and impossibly condescending.

It was almost too bad it was lost on Malia. She glanced to the indulgent face of the banshee beside her, and then back to Scott, entertaining no preamble. “Is this about Stiles? This is about Stiles, isn't it?”

Scott sighed, glancing almost guiltily up at Malia's face. “I just wish he could be here, that's all. He's an important part of the pack, plus he's probably going to be the most critical of any newcomer. It's really important that he gets along with whoever my new Emissary is, but he's got—things to do. And I understand. I just...”

There was nothing else, really, to be said on the matter. Lydia patted his shoulder as he passed by and he could just see, in his mind's eye, Malia leaning in close to stage-whisper to Lydia once he was out of reach, “I knew it!”

It was almost unnerving, how Malia could be so simultaneously as subtle as a knife and as brazenly unsubtle as a wrecking ball.

Deaton was a little more tender with Scott's nervousness, which made a certain amount of sense to Scott, who was pretty sure that Deaton also understood the complexities of being a teenager far better than Malia did, despite the fact that Malia technically was one. His smile was mild but an indulgent sort of understanding as he helped load Scott's free arm with medkits and small sachets of pre-packed druidic herbs and poultices. The top one smelled strongly of lavender, and Scott tried to breathe deep, remembering his mother once telling him that lavender was soothing. He suspected that wasn't a mistake on Deaton's part. “Relax, Scott. Just think of it as a big druid party. Everything will be fine. And you never know, Stiles might surprise you and show up before the end.”

Scott tried to make his expression philosophical, letting his eyebrows lift faintly. “You know, the last party I went to, a bunch of grown men tried to murder me and Liam and Malia with bad dubstep.”

The inscrutable smile Deaton seemed to have specialized in only deepened. “Maybe we should skip the music, then.”

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

The invitations had said ten a.m. as a start time, but the first emissary-hopeful and her entourage arrived almost half an hour early. Scott wasn't surprised, some of the attendees had traveled a long way for this little tournament, and it was important for them to show that they were taking it seriously regardless of how young Scott was. It was important for Scott to show how seriously he was taking it, too, so he made a point of standing at the doorway and greeting every person who arrived, regardless of their standing. Potential Emissaries and their current packmates or friends, other Alphas, all got a handshake which was more calm and firm than Scott was really feeling. He felt weakness or the image of it was something he could not afford, so every moment was spent concentrating on his heartbeat, keeping it low and cool and steady with every pressed palm and new person to pass into the warehouse. Some of them smiled. Some of them didn't. All of them refused to meet his eyes, no matter how earnestly Scott tried to make eye contact.

That was, until the last candidate arrived.

Ten minutes late and rolling up alone in a carefully nondescript car, there was nothing nondescript about this particular candidate. Scott was fairly sure he was a he, just based on the size and shape of the body climbing out of the driver's seat, but so many of the person's features were obscured, it was hard to tell. He was dressed in some strange dichotomy of immensely practical and utterly ridiculous, sturdy-looking dark pants with a multitude of pockets and their close-fitting legs tucked into the tops of shoes that looked like they were the unholy lovechild of Converse sneakers and high-top combat boots. The hoodie was nondescript, black to match the pants with only hints of a royal blue on accents. He had so many pouches, but he also had a blue-and-black keffiyeh, of all things, wrapped carefully around his neck and shoulders, over the hoodie. Almost redundant, given the scarf, the candidate also had a cloth mask that covered his face from the middle of his nose downwards, the black of its cloth vanishing under the line of his hoodie. If that wasn't ridiculous enough, especially all put together, when the figure turned from having retrieved a heavily-laden backpack from the backseat of the car, Scott was pretty sure he'd colored in the sockets of both eyes with eyeblack. No, it was more than that. He'd drawn a domino mask on his face with eyeblack.

It was stunning, not in the way that beautiful people were stunning, but in the way that Scott couldn't quite get his mind around why anyone would come to the gathering so clearly determined to hide their identity from someone they were potentially petitioning to be bound to for the rest of their life. It immediately planted a seed of incredible disquiet in his heart, curling up around the inside edges like kudzu. He could almost hear Stiles' voice in his head, bitter, acidic, incisive, 'I don't trust this guy, Scotty. He's got a shifty look. He looks shifty. All of him is just—shifting.' He might have said something, immediately and off the bat, as he offered his hand to the approaching attendee, but Scott was knocked sideways off of his mental feet the second he could really see the guy's eyes.

They had no color.

He was certain they were contacts, but it was so off-putting, to see eyes with no seeming content to them, empty of anything that eyes should be showing off. Eyes the color of old glass. He felt like he'd seen them before.

“Alpha McCall.” The figure stated, and it didn't have a voice, either. There was sound, absolutely, but it wasn't human, distorted and given a mechanical buzz until Scott could get no sense of the true voice beneath it. Scott frowned despite himself and focused his senses, trying to work out the puzzle of the person in front of him without his resident puzzle-solver at his side.

There were no answers. He had a scent like oil, not that he smelled like oil but that his scent was slippery, eeling out of Scott's proverbial fingers before he could decide what it smelled like at all. An absence of scent would have been more suspicious but less frustrating. This was something, but something that couldn't decide what kind of something it was, mercury for a werewolf's nose. Scott couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't just as toxic. The heartbeat was just as confusing, multiple rhythms at different speeds layered over themselves at varying volumes. None had been loud enough to hear without focusing, but now that he was looking for the truth serum of the potential Emissary's heart, he couldn't tell which sound was the real one. Scott's face screwed up into a frustrated expression even as the latecomer stretched out one hand, waiting patiently for acknowledgment. “...uh...”

“Pan.” The candidate supplied while Scott was busy dwelling on the fact that the guy was a ghost with four heartbeats. “You can call me Pan, Alpha McCall. It's good to be here.”

The digitized tone of Pan's voice put Scott's nerve on edge. He wasn't sure if his hackles were literally raised or not, but instinct told him not to spare the chance on looking foolish to check. “Is that a first name or a last name?”

“It's a name.” The response was as cryptically unhelpful as nearly anything Deaton had ever said. The guy was clearly a druid, at least.

Scott glanced over his shoulder towards the assembled crowd. He wanted an explanation for all the obvious skullduggery, but just as much of him just wanted to get started, to get this whole affair over with. Pan seemed to sense his mood, gesturing inwards with the hand he'd shook. “Shall we?”

Drawing himself back together was a little like recalibrating a machine that had listed a little out of whack. He followed Pan into the warehouse and closed the door behind him, throwing the latch and trying to feel a little less like he'd just locked himself in with the lions. He wasn't Daniel. He was a wolf. He could handle this.

The closing of the door had been a pre-arranged signal. After the sound of the latch, Deaton moved to the front of the room, centering himself on the Pack McCall crest on the wall and clasping his hands behind his back. “Thank you all for attending. Welcome to the McCall Pack Emissary trials. I am Alan Deaton, Emissary Emeritus to the Hale Pack. I have been serving as a stand-in Emissary for the McCall Pack until Alpha McCall's coming of age. We all know why we are here, but I will respectfully remind all attendees and attaches that you are guests on the McCall Pack territory and expect the Accords to be followed.”

He paused, then, to allow any objections to be made, but no one seemed inclined to make them. Deaton nodded, maybe for his own benefit or maybe for the benefit of the gathered crowd, and turned deliberately to face Scott. “Alpha McCall, since this is your gathering—have you anything to add?”

The room seemed to swivel around him, the pressure of the attention of so many people narrowing in on him until he felt like the sides of his head were being pressed by a vice. Scott swallowed heavily, trying to keep his heart from careening out of control, and turned the face the room. “I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone can do, and getting to know all of you. I hope that we'll find a good fit for the Pack and learn a lot.”

The tinny nature of the slightly derisive snort that undercut the level of his voice told Scott that Pan had made it. It was another weight added to the pile of things he already didn't like about the guy.

“Since there's really no reason to waste any more time,” Scott continued, voice firmer, “We should probably get started. I think the first thing we were going to start with is basic barriers.” A glance to Deaton confirmed that, and Scott set his shoulders again. “So let's start from the left—Annaliese, right? Let's just start with you. The idea is to show what you'd do if you needed to put up an ash barrier in a hurry.”

There was a flinch from Annaliese beside him the moment he addressed her, his voice still firm, and Scott couldn't help but wonder why, exactly, even the faintest hint of an Alpha voice caused her such anxiety. He watched her hands shake as she measured out the ash in a circle around herself. It wasn't much, but the wobble was more than enough for his Alpha eyes to catch. It made something in his chest tight.

Largely, the task had been as a first means of proving that everyone who had come to be evaluated had the capacity to do even the simplest of druidic duties. Repeatedly, the room was filled with the snapping tension of a magical circle being completed and then broken. Most of the barriers were unremarkable, the same strategy of drawing a circle around the Emissary over and over. A tall, willowy woman in her mid-twenties with a sharp look in her eyes held something up over her head and after a faint whoomph of pneumatics, a perfect ring of mountain ash floated down around her.

And then there was Pan.

Of course there was. Scott had almost expected that he'd do something different, something else entirely. He wasn't disappointed.

There was very little flare or preamble, which seemed almost entirely at-odds with how Pan had decided to dress himself. He stepped up into the area where the other candidates had been making their circles and reached up to grab his keffiyeh by the corner. With one sharp, jerking motion, he'd unwrapped it from his body and instead whirled it out around himself. By the time he'd settled the cloth down on the ground, it had spread out to several feet wide and so thin it was almost translucent. Set into the cloth was a design Scott had seen before—a triquetra, he'd heard it called, or a trinity knot, three overlapping leaf-like shapes that left a vaguely triangular shape free in the middle where Pan now crouched. A circle had also been drawn around the central part, cutting through every place where the lines already intersected. Pan reached up to fasten two clasps on the cloth and Scott could feel the electric zing in the air that meant an ash circle had closed nearby.

The whole room was silent. Everything smelled thickly of confusion, except for Pan, who smelled still of something out of reach. The concept of evasiveness.

“I don't understand.” Scott admitted as he crept closer to the cloth. Pan's blank eyes swept up from the fastens to meet Scott's face. Eyebrows lifted, or at least Scott thought his eyebrows lifted. With the contacts and all the eyeblack, it was hard to tell. “Why a scarf? What's the advantage?”

“A couple of things.” Pan said, simply, and reached out to trace his fingers over the design on the keffiyeh. “The mountain ash is embedded into the fabric. This means it can't be washed away by rain or blown away by wind. The intersections are important, too. I've done my research, Alpha McCall. I know that you have been able to force your way through single lines of ash in the past. I hear that's how you became a True Alpha in the first place.”

A murmur rippled through the room that Scott couldn't identify, but he inclined his head in acknowledgment.

Pan nodded, too, and tapped one of the places on the scarf where the lines met. “This maximizes my chances of being protected if I have to hide from you or someone like you. To get to the center, you'd have to force yourself across multiple lines, exhausting yourself, or through one of the junctions, which is exponentially harder to do that with than a single line. Like reinforcing a wall. It being in a cloth lets me lay all of those lines out at once without having to waste time to do it manually.”

Scott pressed his mouth in thought and leaned down, reaching for the edge of the scarf. “But what prevents me from just--” As his fingers tried to close around the edge, there was a flash of familiar blue light, and Scott found his hand repelled by an unseen force.

“Ash around the edges of the cloth to prevent a supernatural from moving it.”

He had to admit, he was impressed. Scott wondered if Stiles would have been impressed, too, or if he'd have held out for a miracle instead of simple cleverness. “What about those round weights in the corners of the cloth?”

“Magnets. To help it fall right, even in wind, and to help it anchor against magnetic things. But mostly the weight.” Pan stood, did a brief little circle inside the centermost section as if to show how much room he had to move—enough to sit, but not enough to lay down—and then reached down to unfasten the keffiyeh. The barrier's tension sizzled out of the air.

Nodding, Scott stood and dusted off the palms of his hands. “Good work, Pan. You've clearly given this a lot of thought.”

Without being able to see his mouth, it was almost impossible to tell if Pan was smiling, but somehow Scott got the impression of a smug little grin anyway.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

Over the course of the day, as the potential Emissaries felt out each other and also the members of the McCall Pack, Scott too came to understand a few things about the candidates before him. Annaliese was quiet and competent but shy to the point of anxiety, prone to retreating into herself and ducking her head any time any of the werewolves sounded even the least bit disappointed with her. The tall, willowy woman was named Yseulte and she had been raised amongst wolves to have a sharp mind and a sharper tongue, her language mired in archaic prose and an obstinate insistence on being addressed only as Emissary Yseulte without fail. The middle-aged man named Paul, who was shorter than Scott, was also eager and friendly but easily distracted by talking about family or cooking. Pan didn't like to associate with anyone when he could help it, and spent most of the time he was not doing demonstrations holed up in the corner with his phone or pen-and-paper notes.

Scott felt like this was completely counter-productive given the point of the weekend was to get to know people, and he said as much to Stiles over Skype that night.

As much as Scott had desperately wanted to just see Stiles' face after a day of swimming through a sea of strangers without him, the bandwidth of their connection hadn't been strong enough for a video chat, so he was left with the hazy static on the line as Stiles laughed. He sounded tired, but Scott supposed that was understandable. New York was a long way away. “Well, that guy sounds like a dick. Why don't you just throw him out if he's not gonna play nice with others?”

“Because so far he's also the smartest one of them.” Scott admitted, slightly sheepish, letting his head hang low between his shoulders. “I wish you were here. I can't get a bead on him. He smells like … it's not nothing. It's like slipperiness. He's got four heartbeats.”

There was a crackling noise over the bad connection that half-interrupted Stiles' slightly astonished scoff. “He's got how many?”

Even though he knew that Stiles couldn't see his shaking head, Scott still shook it, one hand lifting to dig into the hair at the back of his head. “I don't know. He's wearing some kind of device that makes it impossible for me to tell which heartbeat is his real one, and something that masks his scent. It's nuts. It's like he isn't real. It's super distracting, I almost can't focus on any of the others because he's just kind of there in the back of the room being … weird.”

“Hmm.” Stiles' voice said, distant and thoughtful. “Did you ask him why?”

“Did I ask him why what? I'm sure it's some kind of artificial thing, Stiles, he doesn't really have four hearts.”

There was the sound of rustling movement, and Stiles made a sound that was almost laughter, blessedly familiar and normal even distorted by the poor connection. “No, dumbass. I meant why he's hiding. Obviously he doesn't want somebody to know who he is. But if he's willing to be your bonded Emissary, you're gonna have to know eventually, right? So...there's gotta be a reason. Maybe you should talk to him about it.”

Scott scrubbed his hands over his hair, over his face. There was a dull ache that started behind his breastbone and was starting to spread through his whole body. “I guess. I just wish you were here. You'd probably have him all figured out by now.”

“I know, buddy, you said that already, but I gotta--”

The necessity of Stiles' departure didn't make it any easier to accept. In some ways, it made it worse, because Scott felt impossibly guilty for even feeling bitter about it, considering the circumstances. “I know. I know. How's New York, anyway?”

“Freaking cold.” Oddly, Stiles' voice almost seemed to brighten, settling into the easy familiarity of complaining. “And basically everyone here is a stranger but family at the same time and it's super uncomfortable. I can't believe we're in New York and it isn't even baseball season, it might have almost been worth it if me and Dad could have caught a game.”

Scott chuckled despite how heavy his chest felt. “Maybe it's better this way, if you actually got to see the Mets in person I might never get you back.”

The bad connection made it hard for Scott to decide if he's heard or hallucinated so much fondness in Stiles' voice. “Aw, Scotty, no, you know better. Nothing could keep me away for long.” There was a beat of quiet, and then Stiles' voice, closer and quieter, more open and more hushed. “It's gonna be okay. Okay? Promise. This is all gonna work out and in the end you'll feel stupid for having worried so much.”

“You can't make that kind of promise, Stiles.”

Stiles snort-laughed and clearly leaned back from the microphone. “Just did, buddy. Now, I miss you and all, but there's a three hour time difference and I am beat as hell. Call me tomorrow after day two of Druid Coachella, okay?”

Scott smiled, even though Stiles couldn't see it on the other side of the computer screen. “You got it.”


	8. Chapter 8

That night he Dreamed again, of the Preserve and the Nemeton and eyes like glass. This time, the puzzle had a picture on it he could not make out.


	9. Chapter 9

The pack had breakfast together before the next day's activities started, taking up an almost unreasonable amount of space in the local Denny's. There was laughter and too much syrup and pancakes and an empty space to Scott's left hand just big enough for a Stiles to fit into. Everyone looked at it, but nobody really said anything about it. It was strangely like grieving and somehow it made Scott want to explode up from the table and slam both hands down on it, bellowing with flashing red eyes that Stiles wasn't dead, he was just in New York, and he'd be back soon.

There was no need to do it. Everyone already knew. It didn't change the itching impulse to do it. He was already cagey by the time they arrived to open up the warehouse.

Pan was already waiting outside, perched on the hood of his car—a rental car, Scott realized as he slowly climbed out of Kira's Prius—with both feet planted against the top of the bumper, attention on his phone. His eyes flicked up when the pack arrived and he stretched up to his full height while still balanced on the bumper, effecting a ridiculous-looking bow before hopping down. Pan's outfit wasn't exactly the same as it had been the day before, but enough of the details overlapped that Scott could tell he was reusing elements. The keffiyeh, for example, was clearly the same one. That felt like it should have been significant, but Scott couldn't quite put his finger on why.

He dallied as the pack moved into the warehouse, eyes on Pan. Pan, who hit the ground with both feet and his chin tipped up. He wasn't showing his throat, that much Scott knew. This was a calculated move, a purely human gesture of smug superiority, even over the person whose favor he was supposed to be currying. Scott's eyes narrowed faintly as he considered the potential Emissary in front of him. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what, Alpha McCall? You'll have to be more specific, I am currently doing a lot of things.” The digital overtone to Pan's voice hadn't changed since yesterday, but Scott hadn't really expected it would.

Still, he frowned faintly, focusing his senses and still finding nothing slipping past the smokescreen of whatever that false scent was and the murmur of too many hearts at once. “Why do you act like that? Keep yourself apart, hide your voice and your face. Even your scent and your heartbeat are hidden, and it clearly wasn't accidental. You're supposed to be here to get to know me and my pack and let us get to know you. Why are you hiding you?”

The sound that came out of Pan's voice modulator was incomprehensible, but Scott thought it probably would have been a thoughtful little hum of sound, if he'd heard it before the machine got ahold of it. “How much do you know about the people you've invited into your territory, Alpha McCall?”

Scott hadn't really been expecting a question. He'd been expecting an explanation, which this very clearly wasn't. He was briefly taken aback, blinking at Pan's half-alien face before he turned to look towards the warehouse. “Not much, I guess. Most of their names I got because they sent letters when I turned eighteen asking to be picked as Emissary and my pack and I agreed this was the best way to make that choice.”

Pan tipped his chin downwards, something intent about his gaze despite the lack of color. “And you didn't even check names at the door. You just assumed if they showed up, they had a reason to be here.”

With a vague little start, Scott realized that Pan was right. He didn't have any idea if the people who had arrived were the people they claimed to be. His eyebrows furrowed, and Pan seemed to catch the expression, because he nodded encouragingly.

“Exactly. It isn't that I don't trust you or your pack, Alpha McCall. I don't trust the other people competing for your attention.” Pan shrugged, a little lopsidedly, and there was something naggingly familiar about the gesture. “I am pretty sure that Emissary Yseulte is actually already bonded to an Alpha and is here for some other reason. If she or anyone else is here under false pretenses, them knowing who I really am could end up giving them a huge advantage over me, which would translate into a huge advantage over you, if you picked me. It'd be pretty shortsighted of me if the first thing I brought to the table was a weakness.”

It actually almost sounded like a reasonable explanation. It was an immensely paranoid explanation, but Scott was well aware that many of the people in this supernatural subculture he'd fallen face-first into were far more paranoid than he was. “Why would you think I'd pick you without having any idea who you are myself?”

Pan's eyes flicked over Scott's face silently, like he was evaluating something he'd seen in the Alpha's expression. “I think my skills speak for themselves. Besides, maybe you're looking at this the wrong way. Maybe instead of thinking about how well I'm hiding from you, think about how well I could protect myself and the pack if I can hide stuff like my scent and my heartbeat from a True Alpha.”

Scott tucked his chin down towards his chest, mulling the words over. They had a particular element of truth to them, too, the kind of truth he didn't particularly like looking at directly. It was Stiles' kind of truth, a slantways truth. Scott tried to imagine what Stiles would say, what his reaction to the logic would be, but he couldn't summon up anything but that haunted sense of longing and the hyper-awareness of how far away Stiles was.

Pressing the fingers of his left hand into the soft part of his right shoulder, Pan rolled his arm around the joint. The other potential Emissaries had started to arrive, their cars rolling up with the hiss of tires on asphalt and a crunch of gravel. Pan turned his back deliberately on the first car to stop moving, headed into the warehouse instead.“Back to the daily grind, Alpha McCall. I'll see you inside.”

He couldn't stop himself from watching as Emissary Yseulte folded outwards from the sleek black SUV that she and her entourage had driven to the warehouse. Now that he was looking, now that he was really looking, he could see how fluidly and flawlessly in concert the small group moved. Scott honestly didn't know how he'd missed it, now that he was looking for it. There was a synergy to their movements that went beyond anything that Pack McCall had, for certain.

The small, densely muscled woman who took up the rear of the entourage caught him watching them, and a sudden tension filled the air as their eyes met. Scott felt his brow furrow. When he let his eyes flash red, he was somehow unsurprised to see crimson flare back at him.

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

There was no way to discuss the situation with his pack without everyone else in the warehouse knowing, so Scott was forced to keep the notion to himself and let it gnaw away at the back of his thoughts any time he had a few seconds to spare for thinking. Every time he caught himself looking at Yseulte or her entourage, only moments later he caught Pan looking at him. When he did, the ghost in the machine lifted his eyebrows as if to ask Scott whether he was seeing what Pan had pointed out. And he did, the more he looked the more he saw it, and the more he saw it the more Scott grew restless, wishing he could do something about it, wishing his schemer and his plan-maker was at his side.

He would just have to wait and hope he could weather the storm.

Most of the morning was spent displaying and sharing different points of plant knowledge, demonstrating poultices and discussing the helpfulness of herbalism in a mixed pack such as Scott's. It was the first time in the gathering that neither Yseulte nor Pan really outshone the others. Instead, this was Paul's moment, all of his passion for cooking translated into a passion for alchemy and holistic medicine. His knowledge seemed to surpass even Deaton's, and by lunchtime, Paul and Deaton had partitioned themselves off in a corner with a heavy, leather-bound tome, talking in low and excited tones. Deaton almost never seemed to get the chance to interact with other experienced druids, so Scott left him to it. It was rare to see so much animation in his mentor's face, much less what he'd call downright joy. That, at least, was a relief in the midst of all the tense posturing.

Time and space had been set aside in the afternoon for a demonstration on more advanced self-defense techniques. An ash barrier was one thing, a very good and a very useful thing, but even the most elaborately-laid barrier wouldn't protect an Emissary forever if their pack couldn't get to them. Given how many times in the past the pack had been split up and put in terrible danger, Scott had insisted on this section of the trial. He needed to know any Emissary that he asked to run with the rag-tag Pack McCall was able to defend themselves if called upon to do it.

This time, Pan was the first into the cleared area, shoulders back and spine curved in a proud way that rattled some jar on the shelving of Scott's mind but didn't show its label. Like before, Scott could just imagine the grin spread out over the young man's face, under his mask, self-assured and ready to impress. Somehow, Scott felt like it might have been less infuriating overall if Pan hadn't impressed at every turn. He wanted to dislike him. He wanted to resent the fact that the Emissary wouldn't show his face or even acknowledge his true heart, much less bare it. Part of him did, in fact, in its own way, but most of Scott just found himself drawn to the stranger. He told himself it was just Pan's sheer, inarguable skill. Skill wasn't everything.

Pan rubbed one hand over the bicep of the other arm, digging at the muscle, and then he turned the gesture into something of a flourish, holding up a small object in one hand. “Since there are werewolves in the audience, I'm gonna do you all the favor of not actually using any of these. They're designed to protect me in the case of a werewolf trying to use deadly force, so they aren't really gentle. That being said, since I know that the McCall Pack aren't into killing, I've done my best to try and keep these from actually being deadly. The first thing here is the sonic emitter.”

Turning his attention to the gadget in Pan's hand, Scott scrutinized it, comparing it in his mind to the emitters the Argents had used. He could see a certain amount of similarity, he supposed, but there was so much about the device that didn't look the same at all. He refused to force a coincidence where there was no such thing.

“This one has three settings,” Pan continued, his digitized voice rebounding weirdly off of the edges of the warehouse until it filled it. “Setting one is a hypersonic whine, inaudible to the human ear. It will disorient and aggravate anything with extra-sensitive hearing, which means both werewolves and regular dogs. Most werewolves will find it overwhelming, but their individual reactions may vary, so you have to be careful. More often than not they'll find it crippling and either collapse or try to run away. Setting two broadcasts music at a particular frequency. It's the same frequency that was used at the lacrosse bonfire on the McCall Pack, it leaves even a True Alpha feeling drunken and woozy, and results in unconsciousness after prolonged enough exposure. The third setting plays both sound tracks at once.”

Scott winced despite himself. He'd been exposed to both sounds, he knew how terrible they were individually. He didn't want to think about hearing them both at once. The very idea made his stomach turn violently.

A voice like imperious crystal rang out from the back of the room, heavy and critical. “Is that it? A few soundbites? You're relying on your iPod to save you from a werewolf attack?”

A derisive snort sounded just that much stranger in Pan's 'voice'. “Hardly. That's just one of the steps. I have a lot.” Somehow, even with the tone so heavily distorted as it was, it was clear that Pan also wasn't sharing all the tricks in his bag. “I've also got these.”

There, he put the emitter away and pulled out a pair of re-purposed aerosol cans. He gave the brightly red-colored one in his right hand a shake and the faintest scent of wolfsbane wafted forth from it. Scott took a step backwards, upper lip curling as Pan continued to talk. “This one contains a concentrated wolfsbane solution in an aerosol form. Yes, it's werewolf pepper spray. I don't need to tell any of you the effect wolfsbane has on werewolves. This one,” Pan lifted his left hand, showing a white canister that smelled faintly of lemons when shook, “Is an antidote to that particular wolfsbane solution, also delivered in aerosol form. It won't necessarily purge the system of other sources of wolfsbane poisoning, but it will purge the contents of the other can in equal doses. So basically a druid can give the attacking werewolves a huge face full of kryptonite and then scrub it from their system before it kills them.”

Before anyone could make any disparaging commentary about a system that Scott thought, frankly, was equal parts genius and cruel, Pan switched out to another device. It was approximately the size of a drink coaster, barely fitting in Pan's palm, with a series of prongs facing away from Pan's hand and a messy tangle of wires protruding from the back. “This is basically a taser. It's a last resort. It delivers a sustained charge of twenty-five million volts for up to three hours, which is the amount of electrical charge needed to prevent a werewolf from being able to shift. It is pretty easy to shock yourself, but once it's attached to its target it can be shut off by a remote that activates a kill switch in all of the units universally.”

Yseulte didn't even laugh. She just moved forward, placing one hand on the top of Pan's right shoulder, and shoved him backwards.

She spoke like she was, herself, a bullhorn, her voice filling the warehouse as she turned a small, tight circle. No one interrupted her, but Scott could see the anger boiling up in Pan's eyes even without the color as he stood to the side, rubbing at his assaulted arm. “When you are in a life or death fight with one or more werewolves, as a human, there's no time for trying non-lethal tactics. If you think a werewolf of another pack is going to spare you just because you're a stranger's Emissary, you'll be dead wrong, and then you'll be dead. There's only one way to effectively stave off a werewolf attack. Samuel.”

Her voice cracked like a whip, like she was calling a dog to heel, and just as surely one of her entourage, part of her pack Scott supposed, stepped forward to stand a few feet before her, head bowed. He wouldn't meet her eyes and Scott took note of that too.

Although he'd never be able to say what, something about Yseulte's stance changed. A new tension cracked through the air, and she lifted one hand, commanding, “Come at me, Samuel.”

Samuel's claws and fangs dropped, and he launched himself at Yseulte without reservation. Scott started to slide a step forward, nervous, but the Emissary's reaction was faster even than his own. All of the tension in the air seemed to draw towards her, gathering along her lean body until Scott could swear he could almost see it. Her eyes bleached over a solid white, occluding all color that had once been there, and began to glow as she drew both arms up and thrust them out and forward.

A flash of pure light and energy came roaring out of Yseulte's hands. They hit Samuel square in the chest and threw him back several yards, until he hit the wall of the warehouse with his back and slumped back to the ground, where he there lay still. Scott could smell the sudden tang of blood in the air, although he couldn't see where Samuel was bleeding from.

No one in Yseulte and Samuel's pack moved to help him. No one moved at all. It was all too clear that something had been broken and something had been changed and no one, excepting maybe Yseulte herself, had any idea what.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

“She did what?!”

Scott could hear the weariness in Stiles' voice, even stretched thin over the poor Skype connection, but he could also hear the sudden stress and the fury, the end of the short sentence louder than the start like he'd leaned in closer to his computer. He wanted to keep that rage from Stiles, to spare him from it, but he had started to learn that life didn't work like that, so the best Scott could manage was to smear his hand over the lower half of his face just long enough to stifle the blow, if only briefly. “She summoned up some kind of power. Telekinesis, maybe. It was like the kind of stuff Jennifer was doing. She threw a wolf from her own pack across the room with it and knocked him out cold.”

Something slammed into a solid surface on Stiles' end, an abrupt and violent jolt. “You've got to put a stop to her, Scott. She can't do that. You can't let her do that.”

“What do you want me to do, Stiles? I can't just call her out without having any idea what's going on, and I still haven't found an Emissary for our Pack.” Scott could hear the weariness in his own voice, too, like a matched set of bookends with Stiles' voice, leaning in on each other and unable to otherwise function. He felt like that a lot with Stiles, if he were being honest with himself. It was a little disgusting how much of the time he felt like he was about to plant his face into the floor without Stiles to counter-balance him.

Far away in New York, Stiles' voice ground its way through a sound of frustration. “Scott, this is more than just about her disrupting your little Country Druid Jamboree. Okay? I need you to understand what this actually means. Druids don't have that kind of power natively. It just isn't a druid thing. Druids learn how to get their power from gadgets and herbs and magical places. Magical places like the Nemeton. You get too far from your magical place and, wham, no connection to the power. This means this girl has come into your territory and started drinking from your magical tree fountain. Except the more she does that, the more it'll attune itself to her, which, do I really need to remind you what happened when Jennifer had it all powered up and at her fingertips? Or the fact that you and I both technically sacrificed our lives to it and we don't know how much that ties us to it?”

An icy chill tried to settle itself into the space of Scott's chest, behind his ribs and under the exhaustion. “You're saying you think she's been secretly tying herself to the Nemeton behind our backs?”

“No, I'm saying that's pretty much the only way she'd have been able to pull up enough power to Force Push a full-grown werewolf so hard they were knocked unconscious.”

Scott used both hands to thread his fingers up into his hair, making an uncomfortable and unhappy noise. “Pan said today that he thought she was already bonded to an Alpha. There's definitely one in her entourage who hasn't introduced herself to me.”

The distant clattering noise was probably Stiles starting to pick up his cellphone. “Then this is officially the start of a hostile takeover. I'm—I'm coming back. Okay? I'll talk to Dad and I'll be there as soon as I can. Okay? Until then, just...try not to piss her off and try to figure out what's going on and definitely, definitely try to make your Emissary choice, because the sooner you can get your Emissary bound to the stupid Nemeton instead of her, the better.”

Stiles was so on top of this, it always felt like Stiles knew what to do when Scott felt like he was drowning. He almost thrived on this kind of thing. There was a wash of unhappy desire in Scott. Why couldn't Stiles have been on the list? He would have given almost anything to have Stiles as the soul  he had to bind himself to, the pair of hands he had to trust to support him and catch him when he needed it.

The wanting was just as easily washed away by the sound of a pained curse from the other side. “...Stiles? Are you okay?”

A hiss of air through teeth, and then Stiles' voice, only slightly strained, “Yeah, yeah, buddy, I'm fine. Just...Charlie Horse or something. 'M fine. I'm gonna get home soon, okay? Just...make sure you're there when I get back. Don't do something stupid, leave that for me.”

Scott wished his laugh had more life in it than it did. As it was it fell flat and stirred dust at his feet. “I wouldn't dream of taking that away from you, man. Get here soon.”

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

In his Dreams, the woods were on fire, and the puzzle bore Stiles' face. Scott woke up in a cold, nervous sweat, hands shaking and heart testing his ribcage for flaws.


	13. Chapter 13

The tension in the air the next morning had an actual taste, bitter and sharp like too much coffee and not enough sugar. Scott had never been very fond of coffee anyway.

Liam and Malia had excused themselves from the activities to instead spend the day by the Nemeton, with strict instructions to call Scott the minute anything went awry. The rest of the people in the warehouse all moved like they were incredibly aware of their place on the ladder of predator and prey, most of the wolves walking with their shoulders rounded and their chins tucked. Many of them wouldn't meet Scott's gaze, no matter how much or how often he tried to approach them on a human level. Annaliese wouldn't come out of the corner and Deaton stopped Scott with a hand on his shoulder and a faintly shook head the second Scott decided he might go after her to try and offer some comfort. Frustration roiled against his breastbone for a few long minutes, annoyance that the sheer state of him as an alpha could prevent him from helping people in need, especially people he'd more or less put in the problematic position himself.

The worst part of all of it was the way that Yseulte and her entourage didn't seem interested in even making a token effort at keeping up appearances any more. They dominated their own corner of the warehouse like they'd claimed it as their own territory, moving amongst each other and against anyone else in the space in a way that set Scott's literal hackles on edge. He watched them, when he didn't think they were looking or even when he knew that they were. It was etched into every line of their bodies and the directions of their gazes. Even their Alpha wasn't in charge. Yseulte towered over all of them, physically and in a more spiritual sense, her carriage imperious and regal and longsuffering, as if she was the only person who had realized she was a queen. He'd seen that body language before, that her pack was sporting. Isaac had shown it, from time to time, when the smokescreen of bravado and sarcasm had fallen apart. It made a venomous snake of anger twist in his gut and the top of his mouth started to itch, fangs waiting to be realized. It took all the willpower Scott had in his bones to stay where he was instead of charge straight into the den the lions had made in his own home and demand to know what exactly Yseulte thought she was up to, treating her pack like she so obviously treated them. It would do no one any good to start a fight in the middle of the process of trying to choose his Emissary.

Apparently, no one had told Pan that particular sliver of wisdom.

He met Scott's eyes briefly and lightning flashed in the silver-white crystal, something dangerous and every bit as wild as anything held in the hearts of the wolves around him. Both eyebrows spiked, and then Pan was turning away, tipping his head at a peculiar angle as he sidled into Yseulte's claimed space. Scott had to turn away, swallow down his rising bile and his rising growl. He'd seen that body language a lot, too, on a boy that was probably still thousands of miles away, maybe in a crowded and dirty airport, so far from Scott and the weight of this decision that now had a bomb trigger timer tied to the bottom of it.

Retreating to the far side of the warehouse, Scott let his fingers curl up, pressing the dangerous edge of his nails into the flesh of his palms without letting them cut through. The last thing anyone needed in the room was the scent of actual blood. Still, it was a close thing, trying to ride out the sudden swell of how unfair the entire situation was that rose up in Scott's heart like Noah's flood.

There was so much fighting, all the time, from all sides and all comers. The Pack was under constant bombardment from people who wanted to take something or destroy something that they had built for themselves, which Scott found a little patently ridiculous given how little he felt they'd actually built. Far more had been taken away from them, and now they were once again standing to lose even more, even in the middle of what was supposed to be a moment of growth and expansion and new beginnings for his Pack. It was as if they could have nothing, not one single moment that wasn't tainted by the Nemeton and what it drew down on their heads, the responsibility that other people had heaped on them to guard what couldn't be guarded and fix what was too broken to mend. All of this on top of the desperate discomfort he had felt, had been feeling all weekend over the idea of having to pick any of these strangers to fill a place by his side that Scott felt was already filled.

That was it, he realized, as suddenly as a car crash.

For at least half of the practical purposes, his pack already had an Emissary. He already had someone he trusted with his back, with his life, with his time and resources and intentions. He already had a partner in crime and a font of information, a clever schemer with human hands that could handle the ash barriers and the things werewolves could not touch. He already had someone who had been so instrumental in teaching him how to be the alpha wolf he'd become, and who would catch him when he faltered and hold Scott's weight up until Scott could stand on his own again. He had that person and it wasn't Deaton. It was Stiles.

He screwed his eyes shut to try to prevent suddenly crying in the middle of the warehouse, with too many eyes on him expecting him to be anything but an eighteen year old boy in the middle of a warzone. Scott felt so small, suddenly, and childish in the worst way, tender and exposed and rubbed raw from most of a three-day weekend spent without Stiles' stabilizing force next to him. He wanted, suddenly and in an undiluted, simplistic way that he hadn't experienced since he was a small child. He wanted Stiles to come home, he wanted Stiles to come back to him. He wanted what he couldn't have, what couldn't be.

He wanted Stiles to be his Emissary.

Epiphany was a fragile thing, and Scott's all but shattered into infinite motes of fairy light when the air suddenly filled with a terrible, inhuman wail. It stabbed straight into his skull and scraped along the insides, as deadly as any alpha's claws, and Scott could feel his eyes flare red in response. He let his fangs drop, whipping around to face the center of the room. It took physically seeing Pan laid out on the floor for Scott to realize that the sound trying to tear its way through his eardrums was a scream filtered through Pan's vocal digitizer.

Scott's own snarl bubbled up in his throat, and almost as soon as he felt the muscles in his legs bunching, he was already across the room, shielding Pan's body with his own. He kept his hands crooked at his sides, dangerous with their claws extended, and showed his teeth, making sure to make direct eye contact with anyone he so much as looked at. Most of them dropped their gaze. Most of them, but not Yseulte. “What did you do to him!? He is a guest of pack McCall, like everyone else here, he is under our protection!”

Yseulte sneered back, pulling herself up like she could use her height advantage to intimidate Scott into submission. People tried that on him a lot. It never worked. “I didn't do anything to him. We didn't do anything to him. As seems to generally be the case with him, he just started this nonsense completely on his own.”

He wanted to slap that look of smug superiority and disdain off of her face with all five claws hooked, but Scott couldn't afford to waste his time on this with one of the Emissary candidates writhing on the floor in agony. Giving a low growl, he turned and immediately crouched by Pan's side, trying to examine the howling young man.

It was hard to tell what could possibly be wrong, with Pan's long body  all snarled up into the fetal position. He seemed to be trying to curl protectively around his right arm, the fingers of the left one digging in and clawing at the bicep, and even through the modifications Scott could hear the sound of desperation in his voice. Shaking his head, Scott reached down to press Pan onto his back, gentle but firm. “I'm sorry. I know you didn't want this. But I've got to get this stuff off of you so I can see what's going on. Don't worry, my Mom's a nurse.”

Pan lifted his left hand weakly to try and brush Scott away, but even at his best he'd have been no match for a true alpha's strength and patience. There were so many frustrating things about Pan's person that made it impossible for him to assess his condition. Too many heartbeats, a confusing and disorienting scent, that twist to his voice that made it impossible to find the human core within it. Scott decided that was the thing he could fix most readily, and getting the mask off would also help Pan's airflow, critical given how heavily and frantically the would-be emissary was breathing. He reached up to tuck his fingers in along Pan's jaw and find the hooks to undo the mask, tugging downwards. “Try to relax. Try to breathe deep. We're gonna figure it out--”

Pan's voice modulated and transfigured as Scott pulled the mask away, and the more it stripped away to reveal the reality beneath the machine, the more Scott realized he knew that voice. He really knew it, more than he knew his own, maybe more than he even knew his mother's voice. It was the one voice he would always recognize in the darkness and when the light was too blinding, and his hands shook as he looked down at Pan's bare face and came to the same conclusion. He felt like he'd been punched in the temple, his head suddenly dizzy.

It was Stiles.

Stiles, voice still gritting through pain, Stiles trying to bear through it anyway, but still Stiles. It had been Stiles all along.

The betrayal hit just about the same time that Deaton reached them. Scott was abruptly furious, looking down at his friend on the warehouse floor and back up to Deaton as if expecting an explanation from one of them. It was Stiles! He'd been here the entire time, while pretending to be in New York, sneaking around and actively lying to Scott just to hide from him. This hadn't even been a casual lie, Scott was used to those by now from Stiles. This was deliberate. Elaborate. He'd gone out of his way to construct an entire kit of devices to hide his identity, and it had worked, and then he'd challenged Scott to try and figure it out with one side of his face while lying about why he was doing it at all with the other side. It hurt, like a brand straight from the fire, and it made Scott angry with Stiles in a way he didn't think he'd been, ever, in all their years. His entire mouth tasted like bitterness and ash.

Stiles' cry of pain grew lower and louder and he rolled back onto his side, trying to cradle his own arm.

“Scott, I know this doesn't seem to have a reason.” Deaton was saying, so reasonable, so damningly reasonable, one hand coming up to rest on Scott's shoulder. “But it does. And I'll explain it later. But right now we need to act, for Stiles' sake.”

Scott swallowed. He swallowed down the bile and the fury and the insult and tipped his head downwards, turning his eyes back to Stiles' face. It was screwed up in anguish and one of those strange contacts had fallen out in his thrashing, leaving him looking weirdly piebald, one glass eye and one the color of dark amber. “Okay. What do I need to do? What's happening to him?”

Deaton reached out to roll Stiles onto his left side under much protest. He pulled Stiles' hoodie down off of his shoulder and then pushed up the undershirt to reveal Stiles' bicep. A thick band around his arm had turned a terrible sort of red, white in places like it was blistering. Scott sucked in a sudden, startled breath and moved like he might touch it, might take the pain, but Deaton caught his hand in the motion and shook his head. “No. You can't take this from him. Not like that. We need to finish this.”

Confusion coiled through Scott's mind and the skin of Stiles' arm seemed to roil in response. It made Scott's stomach roil, too. “But what's going on? What's wrong with him?”

“The Bonding. But it is going wrong.” Deaton explained, voice heavy. “I should have thought this might happen, but I miscalculated. You see, you've clearly made a decision, on some level. Your preexisting connection with both Stiles and the Nemeton made it possible for you to spontaneously start securing a Bond without really meaning to. But something about you also doesn't want it. You're conflicted, so the magic is simultaneously trying to establish the Bond and destroy it.”

Scott felt his features pinch. He was doing this to Stiles. He was the reason his best friend—his lying, conniving, deceitful best friend—was in so much pain he couldn't even speak. He could see Stiles' body shake, even though he couldn't hear his heartbeat, trying to bear whatever was moving through it. “How do I make it stop?”

“You go to the Nemeton, and you sort out how you're feeling about this. Either you'll Bond with him, or you'll sever your chances to ever do so.”

“And if I don't figure it out? What if I'm still conflicted, what if I'm always conflicted?”

Deaton's head shook minutely, hands already reaching to try and pick Stiles up off of the ground. “Then the magic will literally tear him apart.”

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

Stiles was delirious for most of the drive, bundled into the back of Braeden's van as they made their way to the Nemeton. He was held up by the seatbelt, curled up around his middle and his arm, making terrible noises of pain every time that they hit a bump or went too fast around a turn. He couldn't even raise his head, much less carry on a conversation. Scott instead found himself just staring at the curve of Stiles' back, listening to the labored whine of his breathing. The device broadcasting the multiple heartbeats was still whirring away gleefully, and it felt like a splinter jammed up under his fingernail, reminding him of a greater wound that also hadn't healed.

Scott had always known that Stiles was capable of lying, even to those he loved. He'd known that Stiles had always been willing to use means Scott himself thought were beyond reach, to make it to the same ends. The problem was that he'd always been inside the fencing, he'd never been the one those means were used against. It hurt far more than he felt like it should have, boiling beneath his skin, aggravating his wolf. He scratched at the backs of his hands and at his arms, trying to calm himself down. There had to have been a reason. There had to have been a purpose.

The van lurched to a stop and Stiles groaned, letting his body roll against the restraints. Deaton turned in his seat, eyes dark. He didn't need to ask for Scott to slip out of the van without Stiles into the crisp air. The area near the Nemeton always felt supercharged with some kind of electric current that jolted in his teeth. It made Scott shift uneasily on his feet.

Deaton stepped up beside him, his eyes on the battered tree trunk and his tone quiet enough that Scott was sure he was the only one who would hear him speaking. “I'm going to gather up Liam and Malia and go back to the warehouse to make sure everything is going well there. I just wanted to leave you with this to think about. However he went about it, Stiles has been training very hard for this. He could make an excellent Emissary for your pack, but it's your call. Whatever way you decide, you need to decide, and soon. Take Stiles to the Nemeton, it will help his pain. Settle the matter in your heart, and it will help you actualize whatever conclusion you come to. Embrace the Bond or cut it free. There is no middle ground here.”

They weren't particularly words Scott wanted to hear. He'd spent most of his time as an Alpha trying desperately to build a middle ground out of the extremes of doing nothing and going too far. The middle ground was his ground, and now it had washed away under his feet.

Deaton gave his shoulder a solitary pat and moved off to collect Malia and Liam up from the little campsite they'd made for themselves.

Scott waited until Deaton was a few feet away before going to gather Stiles up out of the back of the van. He couldn't walk on his own, although he tried, gasping and digging his fingers into the fabric of Scott's shirt to try and hold himself upright. Scott tried to let him, but they only made it a few steps before he just couldn't bear to watch Stiles struggle so much just to walk. He didn't ask permission so much as simply sweep Stiles up off of his feet, the gesture made so effortless by his werewolf strength, and carried him across the forest floor towards the Nemeton. By the time Scott had Stiles laid out on the stump, the van was already pulling away with a crunching of leaves.

He wanted to be able to say that the silence that was left in its wake was deafening, but it wasn't, mostly because of that damn noisemaker strapped someplace on Stiles' person. “...Stiles, where is that damn heartbeat speaker? I really need it to stop.”

Stiles gave a throaty, unhappy sound and rolled his head along the Nemeton's surface, trying to focus on Scott's face. It was obvious it was a struggle, and sweat had already started to plaster his hair across his forehead. He'd lost the other contact, and the eyeblack he'd been using for contrast was smeared messily over his entire face. He looked like a trainwreck, and moved like a dead fish, flopping his left hand along his chest.

A couple of flails in, Scott got tired of trying to interpret them and just reached down to open up Stiles' hoodie, patting down his friend's chest until he found the part of the outline that didn't match. It didn't take much digging for him to find the battery pack and the little speakers worked into the lining of the sweatshirt. It took only marginally more time for Scott to find the switch and turn it off, and then finally, finally, the only heartbeats he could hear were his own, and Stiles' real, actual heart, buried beneath his breastbone for all that he seemed to try to pretend it didn't exist.

He had a few moments of being able to revel in that before Stiles wheezed his voice into existence, trying to grab at Scott's arm with his left hand. His right arm still seemed almost completely immobile. “...Scott. C...come on. I had to do it. I had to. I-”

“No, you didn't.” Scott couldn't even let him finish the statement, the indignant, childish hurt rising up in him again. “You could have done it a lot of different ways. You could have told me. Instead, you lied to me.”

Stiles coughed like he'd been punched in the solar plexus, letting his eyes close slowly. “I had to. You had to pick me 'cause...I was good at it. Not 'cause I was...me. If everyone'd seen you pick me...they'd have just assumed. And they'd've been right. And it'd have been...so much. So much trouble, Scott. If you'd just picked me. No one could know I was...even in the running.”

Scott shook his head, feeling his jaw grit against his anger and his upset. It deepened Stiles' breathing, caused a spike of fluttery heartbeats in his pulse. “Stiles. How many times have you asked me to trust you? How many times have I done it? How many times have I gone along with your crazy plans without even knowing why they were necessary? When was the last time I even questioned you? Maybe none of the others could know, but I could have known. I should have known. Do you have any idea how hard this weekend has been without you? I could have faked it. But you didn't trust me. You played me for a fool instead, and I guess...part of me is upset because it worked. I had no idea. I didn't even know you could lie to me that well. You shouldn't be able to.”

Short-nailed fingers dug into the flesh of Scott's forearm, but Stiles lacked the strength to make the grip hurt. He gave up, hand dropping limply, a moment later, and instead seemed to concentrate on trying to wrap himself around his right arm, on rasping out words. “I couldn't....I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't be...just the one you wanted. Scott. I … I had to be the one...that Alpha McCall needed.”

The words stirred something within Scott that was not the pain and upset he'd been feeling all morning. He paused, blinking his eyes clear as if to look at Stiles for the first time since he'd realized who Pan really was.

He was pale, sweat-soaked, curled around the base point of his own arm and all but lost, now, to the panting whine of his pain. Scott could almost taste it, stomach-turning and bitter in the air. He realized, with that terrible pill rolling on the back of his tongue, that it was his fault that Stiles was feeling this pain, that he was the one causing his friend distress. The part of Scott that felt this was maybe a little justified started to shrivel and atrophy. Stiles had never had a problem with loving, so much as how he expressed that love. The more that Scott looked down at his friend, the more he came around to the idea that this had been done out of love. Stiles had tried to protect the Pack and Scott in the only way he knew how, and he must have bent himself backwards trying to learn enough in a few short months to be able to keep up with people who had been training their whole lives to fulfill this sort of calling. And that was the entire thing, if there was a thing at all—Stiles hadn't kept up. He'd entirely surpassed all of them. He'd blown them out of the water out of a sheer determination to prove himself as the best-qualified to stay in a place Scott had already known he'd belonged.

Reaching down, Scott put his hand on the curve of Stiles' neck, hooking his fingers along his jaw. He turned Stiles' head, gently, until Stiles was facing him, trying to look at Scott through the slits of his barely-opened eyes. “Stiles,” Scott said, his voice quiet and warm, some how expansive, like it could take up the entire space of the woods around them, “You foolish thing. I've always needed you. I always will need you. And I'm kind of pissed that you felt like you couldn't trust me with the truth, but I know you and truth don't always get along. That doesn't change that I need you. Alpha McCall needs you. As his Emissary, and also as his best friend.”

Something changed, in that moment. Something as fundamental as his bones, something Scott knew he would never be able to take back.

Stiles' whole body shuddered, and he gave a gasp like he'd suddenly come up for air after coming within the width of a mermaid's scale of drowning. He rolled over onto his back, curving upwards, and peeled his hand away from his arm to instead let his fingers flex against the air. Scott could only watch as his breathing took on a different pitch, eyes rolled back into his head with a different sort of desperation etched into their edges.

Scott reached out to touch the bare skin of Stiles' right arm with his left hand, and it was like he'd shoved his hand into a pool of electrified water. Energy jolted up through him from Stiles' body, burrowing into him, carving a place into his heart where he could feel it settling and taking root, making space for itself by carving out a little piece of Scott. He could feel that pour out of him, water and steam, and abruptly the skin of his arm, just below his tattoo, began to itch, infuriatingly, just on the edge of pain.

A seemingly random pattern of dots swelled into existence on Scott's skin, like a bruise raising to the surface. At the same time, a perfect mirror of Scott's own tattoo painted itself across Stiles' skin, staining his bicep as surely as if he'd gone to the tattoo parlor himself. He was marked. They were both marked. Scott knew without being told that the piece of him now wrapped around his friend's arm would never come back to him. It was a part of Stiles now, until Stiles stopped having parts to be made up of.

Still breathing heavily, Stiles opened his eyes, and Scott was taken aback to see the flare of bright crimson staring back up at him. His mouth went dry.

It gave Stiles enough time to raise his hand, sweat-slick along his palm, and press it to the side of Scott's face. His mouth quirked up on the echoing side, almost a smile. “Scott, dude. Your eyes.”

The words were enough to jar Scott back to himself, knowing the concern was shading in over his face. “Stiles, no. _Your_ eyes.”

“What's wrong with them?”

“They're red,” Scott leaned on the word, like it was the only way to impart to his friend what was going on. “Like Alpha red.”

Stiles absorbed that information, letting it sink down through himself, and then he nodded like the idea of having glowing red eyes was in no way bothersome to him. “Deaton said something like that might happen. He said there'd be a lot of changes. I guess that's one of them. I guess we're bonded now, huh? Congrats, Alpha McCall. You have a brand new Emissary, please remember to feed and water him regularly.”

Scott laughed, a little too breathy, and let the Alpha red fade from his eyes. It flickered out and disappeared from Stiles' at the same time, and for some reason, that just made him laugh a little harder. Stiles reached up with both hands and brought Scott's head down to press their foreheads together.

From there, it was the most natural thing in the world for Scott to take the extra inch and claim Stiles' mouth, too.

He wasn't entirely sure what he'd expected. Surprise, maybe, a bit of stiffness and pushback, to be told that he'd taken a step too far in his sudden rush of giddy gratitude. None of that was what Scott actually got. Instead, Stiles made a quiet sound, muted by the crush of their mouths, and pressed his chest out and upwards, the fingers framing Scott's face tightening as he tried to pull them closer together. His mouth opened and Scott took the space inside, plying at Stiles' tongue and lips. He took Stiles' breath to replace the breath that Stiles stole from him, reveling in the sound of his name tumbling out almost accidentally when he broke the seal of their mouths to start kissing along the sweep of Stiles' jaw.

The surprise he'd expected came from him, not Stiles, when he tried to start moving lower. Stiles' fingers tightened until he'd pulled Scott's face up to make eye contact, mouth red-flushed but eyes so serious it seemed out of place. “I need you to understand something. Before...anything. Okay? I need you to hear this.”

Scott didn't say a word. He scrunched his eyebrows down and brought his bottom lip into his mouth, unconsciously mirroring an expression he'd seen on Stiles' face a thousand times.

Stiles sucked in a breath and puffed it back out like he needed to build his courage up. “So, uh. Deaton said. If you picked me. If we Bonded. There might be feelings involved. Like. Definitely. Would be feelings involved. He told me it would change everything but the first thing would be that it might make us both feel like, uh. Like we needed to be closer than we've been before. To complete the Bond or something. I'm not really sure? I just wanted you to know that this, what's starting to happen, what's about to happen, whatever, that's not new for me. If you want to...I'm not being magically compulsed or anything. Or maybe I am but not in a direction I wasn't already willing to go in. But you might be. And I don't want you to regret this later if you come back to your senses so just know that. Okay? Do with it what you will. Deaton also said if nothing happens, our Bond'll be fine. We don't, uh. We don't have to--”

The rambling words were an unnecessarily avalanche which the alpha stopped up with his own mouth. Scott didn't need to search through the warmth and eagerness spreading out underneath his breastbone to find what was authentically his and what was magic. It was all magic, in its own way, but it was all his, and it always had been. It had always been there, even if the path to it hadn't been unlocked. Scott wasn't afraid of it. He pulled back after the kiss to murmur, lips still brushing the skin of Stiles' own, “Stiles, I'm not going to regret you and me. I told you I need you. I do. I'm pretty sure that means any way I can have you. Did this little stunt teach you nothing? Even when you're pretending not to be, you're mine.”

Something thrilled in his veins at quantifying it, at enumerating it and giving it voice. Stiles seemed to agree because he gave a helpless little noise, trying again to press himself against the line of Scott's body. Grinning, Scott let the red pool in his eyes once again just to see the effect he had on Stiles' gaze. There was something a little intoxicating by having that minute amount of control over a wild boy who had never been tamed before.

“Scott,” Stiles was breathing into his ear, stretching out the 'oh' until it sounded more like an 'ah', “Did you bring my Emissary kit? Please...please for the love of God...tell me you brought it.”

It took a moment to focus, a little gesture of pulling back to prop himself up on his forearms, but eventually, Scott found the bag in question, half-crushed under Stiles' body and pressed against one hip. “Yeah, yeah, it's here, what's in it that you need?”

“Lube. Lube and condoms.”

Blinking in something like shock, Scott turned his attention back to Stiles' face. The Emissary just grinned, already sweat-soaked and absolutely shameless. “Hey, I told you, Deaton warned me this might happen. 'S my job to be prepared, right?”

Scott smiled, leaned down to kiss Stiles' face again. “...man, I'm glad I have you.”

Reluctantly, he rolled to the side, freeing Stiles from beneath the pin of his body. Stiles gave a heavy, unhappy-sounding sigh, but Scott only smirked at him, lifting his chin towards the campsite that Malia and Liam left behind. “Go get some blankets and pillows or something, I don't want one of us to have to pull splinters out of the other one in weird places. That seems super unsexy.”

Opening Stiles' druid bag seemed to be an immediate mistake. The scent of wolfsbane floated out of it in an aggressive cloud, impossibly strong to his enhanced senses. Scott wheezed, pulling the bag back away from his face, and soon it was Stiles who was smirking, head shaking back and forth. Long fingers claimed the kit from Scott's grip. “Look, why don't you get the blankets and use those natural wolf instincts to make us a love nest. I'll get the goodies out of the boobytrapped druid bag.”

“Is it really boobytrapped?” Scott asked, blinking his watering eyes clear as he surrendered the satchel and instead moved to poke his nose through the tents. There were a few blankets and pillows, as well as two sleeping bags which could easily be unzipped for more cushioning. He'd apologize to Liam and Malia later. And possibly replace their sleeping bags.

Stiles' laughter seemed vaguely distracted as he dug through his things. “Nah. But the face you made when you opened it was epic, so I figured it must have been kind of disgusting at the very least. I thought about it, but if I booby-trapped it, then no one else could get into it if my ass needed saving. Seemed unwise.” After the moments spent digging around, Stiles finally pulled free a ziploc baggie with a grin of triumph. He really had come prepared.

Scott piled all of the blankets he could find into his arms and then laid them out on the Nemeton's surface as Stiles fought with the baggie. He found he could not come to any kind of decision about how the 'nest' should be designed, constantly fussing and re-arranging them in a quest to find what might be the best for Stiles. He was still fretting, teeth working the edge of one thumbnail ragged, when the snap of an ash barrier falling into place brought his head up sharply.

Stiles stood with the bottle of lube in his mouth, one hand still extended from where he'd drawn the circle in a wide sweep around himself, Scott and the Nemeton. He gave a cavalier shrug when he noticed Scott's attention, dusting his hands off before lifting one to take the bottle out of his mouth. Scott was briefly distracted by the motion of his lips freeing up. “It won't hold out much and it won't prevent a show, but hey. I thought something's better than nothing. Makes it feel kinda cozy.”

A smile pulled the corners of Scott's mouth up into a soft curve, tempering his expression with fondness. Something else warmed the edges of his limbs as Stiles moved away from the circle, and it was almost before Scott knew it that he'd reached out to grab his new Emissary by the waist and spun him around, laid him out gently on the pile of pillow and cloth he'd made on the Nemeton. Straddling Stiles' hips, Scott took his time to lean down and begin to peel Stiles out of his clothing, stripping away the hoodie that had wrapped up those long, able limbs. He pushed his hands up underneath Stiles' undershirt and rolled it away over his wrists, watching as Stiles' belly and chest started to roll with his heavy breathing. Stiles reached out to grab the hem of his shirt and drag it over his head. He managed to get the collar caught up beneath his chin with a low, wanton cry when Scott took the opportunity to reach out and rubbed the print of one thumb across one of Stiles' nipples. It immediately peaked to his attentions and Scott laughed, leaning down to press a soft kiss in the wake of his thumb before he moved to help extricate Stiles from his shirt.

Clothing was an obstacle. Scott was acutely aware of Stiles' long fingers scrabbling along the edges of his body, digging into his own shirt and pulling at it until it peeled away. They pried at belts and buttons, shimmied off pants and folded down cotton and freed themselves.

It wasn't the first time that Scott had seen Stiles naked; they'd known each other for a long time and shared bathrooms, bedrooms and locker rooms when necessity demanded it. It was still nothing like this moment, the pale boy spread out beneath him, naked and on display. He could hear the sound of Stiles' heart beating quick against his ribs, he could see the echo of it in Stiles' arousal as it twitched to life. It was something new between them, tender and fragile, but Scott was determined to make it something familiar, as strong as the steel that was the rest of their relationship. He dragged his fingerprints down the center of Stiles' chest, down his belly, and wrapped them around the hardening length of Stiles' cock.

The noise Stiles made was downright beautiful. He pressed himself upwards into Scott's palm, mouth opening tantalizingly. Scott couldn't help himself. He leaned down to claim the space opened, tightening his grip faintly and stroking along Stiles' skin tenderly. Stiles dug the fingers of both hands into his hair and held him to the kiss, gasping against Scott's mouth every time he drew his hand down, nipping at Scott's lips and tongue when it came back up. “God, Scotty. Don't—don't tease me. It doesn't...it doesn't suit...”

“It doesn't suit me?” Scott chuckled, although he wasn't sure that was exactly the response that Stiles wanted, and pressed his thumb to the head of Stiles' cock, smearing the beads of precome down along his shaft. Stiles' voice trilled, his head thrown back to expose his neck. Scott claimed that space too, running his tongue along the broad vein that graced one side of Stiles' neck only to cross over his esophagus at an unexpected point. “So what does suit me?”

Stiles' fingers tightened in Scott's hair and he squirmed against the blankets, dragging his skin against Scott's at every point he could find to make contact. “Me. Me wrapped all around you. That suits you. I suit you. Come on, just—the lube. Open me up, Alpha McCall, let's finish this.”

It wasn't like Stiles had asked nicely, exactly, but given the circumstances, Scott could forgive him. If he were honest with himself, he could forgive Stiles almost anything, but the reality of it was that he could feel it too. There was something in the closed space of the ash circle with them, a thickness to the air that he could barely identify as potentiality. There was something different, something new on the other side of this act, for the both of them. It should have been terrifying, Scott should have been petrified of what it could mean. He wasn't. It was Stiles. Whatever else happened, Scott knew one thing.

Stiles would be there on the other side with him.

Scott reached for the bottle of lube without any further prevarication. It drizzled out with a thick consistency and Scott worked it against his fingers for a few moments before reaching down and boldly pressing a digit against Stiles' hole. Stiles' breath caught sharply and Scott lifted his eyes to watch the look on his face when he transitioned from rubbing in soft, careful circles to pressing one fingertip in. Stiles didn't disappoint, pulling his bottom lip into his mouth to bite into it, curling his whole mouth into a smile. He dragged his fingers through Scott's hair and along his neck, apparently luxuriating in the feel of Scott's slow determination to stretch and ready him.

One finger gradually became two, and Stiles' sly smile of pleasure became quiet, huffing grunts of breath and voice. Scott scissored his fingers to persuade space out of Stiles' body and Stiles groaned, fingers starting to flicker against the edges of Scott's skin. “...I can...I can....Scott. Okay. Scott, please.”

The throbbing and the lancing need that was making its way through Scott's own body, crawling down his spine to bottom out between his legs, more than agreed. Giving his own deep moan, Scott pulled his hand free of Stiles just to slick down his erection. He rocked his body downwards, using one hand to guide himself. Stiles spread his legs a little further open, giving Scott's body enough room to slot in between them, and with a little flutter of voice, he pressed inside.

Stiles' body was hot and close around him and, in a way Scott could not understand enough to define, it was home. This was right, this is what they'd needed, maybe what they'd always needed since the time they'd become big enough and old enough to understand what this kind of thing was. Scott pressed himself deeper, working in gradually with gentle swings of his hips and Stiles' voice guttered low. His spine stretched and then arced up towards Scott's body and he drew both hands down from Scott's hair to smear his fingers along the channel of Scott's spine. When he reached the base of it, Stiles dug in, fingernails biting faintly into Scott's skin, demanding and cajoling until they were flush together.

There was no need for discussion or negotiation. They moved as they ought to have, like two souls who had known each other so long that they could not remember existence without being together. When Stiles' voice started to raise through the forest in overwhelmed, needy yelps of sound, Scott knew without having to be told to how to roll his hips, which direction to change his angle to find that place inside of Stiles that made the boy's body bow upwards off of the Nemeton, caused him to clutch close with his legs and his hands. They kissed like they were passing secrets in class, names traded back and forth on whispers until they were wrinkled and worn from handling.

It was like falling down the side of a mountain, all tangled up in Stiles the whole time. Scott didn't know if it was the Bond solidifying itself or the magic of the Nemeton or just the magic that they'd always had, somewhere between them, but the rhythm and the sensation were so all-encompassing that he soon felt like he couldn't tell which body belonged to whom, who was where or whether there was a difference between himself and Stiles any longer. They'd blended together, spread out between two fragile frames of flesh and bone. The body beneath him arced up suddenly and Scott could hear Stiles' voice bellowing around him from all angles. He grew tight and he grew taut and he shivered, pulsed against Scott as his release hit him. The sharp scent of Stiles' come suddenly crowded in around them, its heat against his belly and chest, and Scott couldn't last an instant longer, even if he'd wanted to.

Scott used both hands to slide Stiles against him by his ribcage, vision going white-hot at the edges as the pleasure crashed through him. He poured himself into Stiles as Stiles groaned, flush-faced and wanton, and it wasn't until Scott realized he could hear the echoes that he knew he'd roared at all. Stiles opened his eyes to stare at Scott, expression full of crimson wonder, and Scott could only smile back breathlessly while Stiles dragged one thumb across his bottom lip. A moment later, he pulled Scott down, tucking the alpha's body against his own and fitting them against each other like two pieces of an ancient puzzle box. “...Now...now that is how you bond your Emissary. Holy...”

“I don't think it was enough.” Scott found himself saying, although he could feel the contentment in his belly, the warm slithering happiness at being so close to Stiles, at being so connected with him, thoroughly connected, physically, emotionally, mystically.

He felt Stiles' expression furrow more than he saw it. “...what do you mean, you don't think it was enough? Are you...are you serious? Are you telling me you can't...feel...”

Scott levered himself up on one elbow, determined to see Stiles' face. He was beautiful in the aftermath, Scott decided, cheeks still pink-flushed and mouth shiny, hair sweat-soaked against his forehead. His eyes had returned to their normal color but something about the poor light around the Nemeton made them seem molten. Scott smiled. “Oh, I can feel it. But I think we should definitely do that a lot more, like a lot more, to keep the Bond strong. Definitely.”

Stiles gave a sound that was largely a laugh, balling up one hand into a fist just to dap it mostly-gently into the meat of Scott's shoulder.


	15. Chapter 15

The night crept in around them, chill nipping at their bones. No amount of True Alpha snuggles could waylay the need eventually. Scott was obliged to find their clothes and then curl up protectively around Stiles' form, letting his heat seep into the other's bones.


	16. Chapter 16

Scott woke up to the sounds of heartbeats and footsteps on the forest floor. It took him only a few seconds of scrabbling for coherence to realize that he knew those pulses, the scents starting to waft in on the wind. He jolted upright, reaching to clutch at the form beside him. “Stiles. Wake up. Yseulte and her pack are coming.”

In the entire time Scott had known him, he had never seen Stiles wake up so quickly. One moment he was sprawled out against the blankets, seemingly dead to the world, and then next he was hauling himself into a seated position, eyes wide and sharp, digging his fingers into the pocket of his jeans and pulling out his phone. He pushed up onto his feet and one hand, speaking into the phone with the other. “Okay, Google. Go to Red Alert.”

There were a lot of questions Scott had about that particular instruction, but there was no time to ask them. Stiles' phone chirruped its assent and got shoved back into the pocket, Stiles instead turning his long fingers to pulling his Emissary kit out and starting to go through it. He cursed quietly and while Scott turned his head to the side, faintly, to acknowledge Stiles speaking, he never took his eyes off of the depths of the forest. “The taser buttons are on the outside of the ash circle.”

Scott reached back to put a hand on Stiles' forearm. “It's not really gonna matter. They brought Yseulte with them. She can break the barrier anyway.”

The time for conversation passed. The other pack began to close in on the Nemeton's space, fanned out to surround it from a wide arc. The pack's squat alpha took front and center, smiling to show teeth laced with cruelty as she drew closer. “Oh, it seems our precious true Alpha McCall has picked his very first Emissary. I remember that feeling. It's almost the best one. You convince yourself there's something so pure in the connection. Enjoy it. It turns out they're so fragile.”

A growl bubbled up in the back of Scott's throat and he swallowed it back, refusing to take the obvious bait. Instead, he stood tall, moving to the edge of the ash barrier without hesitation. He felt it snap and give way right as he reached the edge and Scott did not have to turn to know that it was Stiles, moving in synchronization, who had broken the protection to let him out. “What do you want? This is McCall Pack Territory. This is private.”

Just behind her alpha, Yseulte smiled indulgently, without any kindness. “Do you know how rare a Nemeton with any power left in it is, Alpha McCall?” It was a rhetorical question and Scott could recognize that even before she continued speaking. “They're incredibly rare. Even more rare is one that's so virtually unprotected as this one is. It's practically ripe for the taking, and I think if you'd been paying the least bit of attention at your little carnival you'd have realized I'm more than ready for its power.”

“But it isn't ripe for the taking.” Scott pointed out, his voice hard and stripped of all the gentle padding he usually wrapped around the core of steel. “Like I said. This is McCall Pack Territory. This Nemeton is under our protection. Please leave.”

“You're so polite.” The strange alpha laughed, leaning in close enough to invade into Scott's personal space. He didn't flinch, at least grateful that she was shorter than he was and it wasn't a fight to keep his chin down and from even giving the illusion of submission. “It's almost refreshing. Too bad it isn't going to get you anywhere. We're not asking you, pup. We're claiming it. Yseulte has already started the bond.”

Stiles' voice suddenly cut through the air with its own laugh, just as lacking in humor as the other alpha's. “You guys didn't do any research at all, did you? Wow. Wow. That's almost hilarious. Do you have any idea how a busted, ruined tree like this one got to be the most fully-charged and powerful Nemeton on the West Coast? Any of you? Come on, raise your hand if you know this, get it up there, way up high.”

Having stood up on the flat surface of the Nemeton, Stiles had the height advantage even over the eternally tall Yseulte. No one spoke. No one raised a hand, even to Stiles' baiting. The silence was thick and visceral, uncomfortably charged with hostility.

“Nope, nobody? Okay, well, I'm disappointed. It was a Darach. You're familiar with the term? A dark druid, one who started using her power for personal vendettas instead of the greater good. You should probably get familiar with it.” The whiskey depths of Stiles' eyes flashed with anger as he turned his expression towards Yseulte. “She sacrificed people to it. First virgins, then warriors. Lastly she was gonna sacrifice guardians, but these three idiot teenagers got in her way and sacrificed themselves as surrogates. Except there was a ritual, and somehow, after sixteen hours of being dead, the teenagers woke back up. You know their names? 'Cause I do. Allison Argent. Stiles Stilinski. _Scott McCall_.”

All eyes moved to Scott, but Scott refused to flinch. It took the attention off of Stiles, and what Scott could feel building to a fever pitch in the boy behind him. Stiles' voice dropped several pitches, picking up a dangerously sharp, poisoned edge. “Do you have any idea what happens when you survive sacrificing your life to a Nemeton?”

Power surged through the air suddenly. Scott could feel it singing in his bones, moving through his body as if he were nothing more than a conduit, wires directing the power where it needed to go. Vine-like roots exploded out of the ground around the Nemeton suddenly, spraying loam and pebbles in all directions. They moved with serpentine quickness, grappling the ankles and legs of the pack attempting its assault and binding them in place. “You become a part of it.”

Stiles finally moved forward enough for Scott to see him out of the periphery of his vision. A terrible rage had overcome Stiles' expression, his eyes glowing with the milky-white shine Scott had come to associate with druids pulling on the Nemeton's might. He wondered if his own eyes matched Stiles'. There wasn't time to ask or check. Stiles was already leaning in close to Yseulte's furious face, his smile tugged up from the corners like a death's head. “That power you've been stealing, while you thought we weren't paying attention? It isn't just ours. It's _us_. And you can't have it.”

Stiles reached out and placed one broad palm over Yseulte's face, digging his fingertips in against her skin. There was a swelling pulse of white-lot light that came from her and soaked into his skin, traveling up his arm. Yseulte screamed.

Her alpha lurched to the side, struggling against the roots the held her down in an attempt to get to Stiles, but Scott was faster and unburdened. He placed one hand in the center of her chest and pressed her back, lifting his lips at the corners to show his fangs. It took a minute or less for Stiles to finish whatever it was he was doing and retreat a step or two, returning to the center of the Nemeton.

“My pack will be here any minute now,” Scott told her, tone stern. “I'm going to give you one last chance. Stiles is going to let you go—all of you—and you can leave. Go, and don't return, and we won't harm any of you. But stay, or return, and try to fight, and you'll regret it. I don't care if I'm only eighteen. I'm a True Alpha, and I'm fully Bonded to my Emissary and my Nemeton. You don't have any idea what I'm capable of. You don't want to find out the hard way.”

He didn't need to give any further signal. The roots began to retreat, far slower than the way they'd burst from the ground. The assaulting pack jerked their limbs free, claws still showing, and for the span of too many measures, they remained, tense and leaning forward, like they were collectively deliberating over whether they felt like they would test their luck anyway, with only Scott and Stiles present.

A strident howl tore through the tension in the air, coming from the edge of the preserve.

The invading alpha flinched, and then turned and started to run. Her pack didn't need to be told to follow.

Scott waited until they were almost completely out of sight before stepping up onto the Nemeton, hand seeking Stiles', and tipping his head back to give his own victorious howl up to the trees.

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

A car ride later found Scott and Stiles laying side-by-side on their backs on Scott's bed. It was a familiar state of being, something that had happened a hundred times or more over the course of their lives. It was companionable, usually, but then again usually they hadn't just turned the entire paradigm of their relationship directly onto its head.

It felt like it should have been more terrifying than it was. Scott felt like he should have felt like the entire situation had left them on the edge of a cliff with a dizzying fall in store if they made even one wrong move. But he didn't. He felt more grounded and content than he had felt in almost a week. Having Stiles close to him felt right. There was no question in his mind. He'd had no other choice to make when it came to picking his Emissary.

Still. There were things that needed to be sorted out. Things had changed, and if nothing else, Scott needed to know what they had changed to. “So, uh. About what happened in the preserve--”

Stiles' whole chest rattled with a sigh, and he turned to prop himself up on one elbow, peering down at Scott from his vantage point. “I didn't hurt her.” He said, and the incongruity of the statement was so great, Scott could only lay there in puzzled wonder, initially unsure what Stiles even meant. “She'd been siphoning power off of the Nemeton. We're attached to it, both of us. I was serious, that power is literally a part of us, now. All I did was take it out of her. I didn't even take any of her own power, she's fine, seriously, Scott, you've got to stop worrying about people who have overtly tried to cause you har--”

Eyebrows furrowed, Scott raised one hand to press its fingertips against Stiles' ever-moving mouth. “That isn't what I meant. I was talking about the sex.”

“...oh. Oh. Okay. What about that?”

Scott let his hand drop, teeth furrowing downwards into his lip instead. He could see the slight trepidation creeping onto Stiles' face, but he wasn't entirely sure he knew why it was there. “I, uh. I know you said that things would change, and that...the need to solidify the Bond might inspire us to do some things we didn't necessarily want to do. I just wanted to know how much of that was because you wanted to, because for me, it was like nothing had actually changed and I would...I mean, if you wanted to, I would...”

Stiles coughed something close to a laugh and moved again, this time slinging one leg over Scott's body so that he could settle his weight down across the alpha's hips. It settled something in Scott's heart, too, and he either couldn't or didn't care to keep himself from reaching up and running his fingertips over Stiles' back and backside as Stiles spoke. “Scott. You idiot. I love you. I don't know if I've actually loved you for forever but it sure feels like it. You have it backwards. I don't love you because I'm your Emissary now. I'm your Emissary now because I love you. So, yeah. I want to. I definitely want to. I want to every time we can steal a moment, I want to any time you get some time off, I want to when you need to blow off some steam and when I just need to show you how freaking amazing you are, I want to see how you fall apart under my hands and I want every part of you as far inside me as it can get, yeah I want to, like I've never wanted anything before.”

Warmth flooded Scott's frame, his bones, his heart. He grinned, running his hands up Stiles' spine in order to knit them in his hair and pull him down into a sloppy, equally warm kiss. “Then let's.”

That night, when Scott Dreamed, the forest was in bloom. The puzzle, completed, had been inlaid into the Nemeton's trunk, all pieces connected and united. Scott, Stiles, and their magic tree.

 

 


End file.
